Former residents want feds to investigate displacement

BALTIMORE — Angela Banks remembers it was a brief phone call. Her landlord told her she needed to leave as soon as possible. He was selling the threestory rowhome in Poppleton — her home for decades — to the city of Baltimore to make way for a new development.

It was wintertime in 2018. Banks and her five children moved into her green Ford Explorer. At night, they rolled up the windows, put on two pairs of pants and piled clothes on themselves to keep warm. During the day she begged for gas money.

“I lost everything. Everything I worked hard for and everything that I had, I lost,” Banks said. “Didn’t take nothing except trash bags and clothes.”

On Monday, Banks, along with the nonprofit advocacy group Economic

Action Maryland, filed a complaint with the federal government to investigate the displacement of Black residents from Poppleton under the Fair Housing Act. They held a news conference on the steps of Allen A.M.E. Church, a block south of Banks’s old home, with current and former residents to announce the complaint against the city.

The complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and it alleges that when the city of Baltimore targeted Poppleton for redevelopment, it disproportionately displaced Black residents from their homes and perpetuated the city’s segregation.

“Baltimore has long been a tale of two cities. One a wealthy, predominantly white city with charming homes, tree-lined streets, and all kinds of amenities,” said Marceline

White, executive director of Economic Action Maryland.

“While the other predominantly lower income, majority Black neighborhoods have seen little investment or improvement in their communities for decades.”

City leaders slated Poppleton, a predominantly Black neighborhood, for redevelopment as early as 1975, according to the complaint. Almost 20 years ago, the city promised to raze about 500 homes there to clear space for a massive complex of apartments and other buildings to be developed by La Cite, a New York-based firm. In 2015, the city approved up to $58 million in public financing for the project.

As part of their deal, the city acquired rowhomes, paying homeowners to leave and knocking down entire blocks.